The great white horse statue planned for the Ebbsfleet Valley has NOT been abandoned.

According to the man who has designed it, a lifesize version of the beast is about to be unveiled in London this month.

Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger won the competition to put a figurehead on the Northfleet embankment.

He told BBC interviewer Kirsty Lang on the Front Row magazine programme on Radio 4: “I think things are beginning to move forward on that front.

“It is obviously a lengthy process trying to make something on that scale but (in July) we are going to install a life-size model at the bottom of The Mall outside the British Council offices.”

The horse will stand on its four legs - justifying Ms Lang’s description of it being “a racehorse”.

The design has been criticised for not prancing like the traditional Invicta horse.

Mr Wallinger said he was confident that one day the 150ft statue would “stand over Kent”.

Invicta is associated with the Saxon warlords Hengist and Horsa. They took control of the Kingdom of Kent in the fifth century.

The skeleton of a horse from the Saxon period was unearthed near the site for the statue during the building of the high speed rail track.

A spokesman for Land Securities, the main partner for the Ebbsfleet area, said there were a number of hurdles the horse would have to jump before it could go ahead.

Among them it needed several million pounds to meet the cost of the plan.
“We, along with London and Continental Railways and Eurostar, always agreed we would fund it up to the point of design and planning,” he said.

“It is certainly not dead, but the issue is the cost - and that is money that has to be found.”

He said Mr Wallinger was seeking funding as well as a lot of other people, but the money was not yet available.